It's okay to put your hood up and take a nap!

Poor Audrey was so tired after school she fell asleep with her coat and boots still on!

 Ever have one of those days where no matter how hard you try nothing you attempt works the way you want it to? How do you normally handle those days? Do you eventually say, "okay, you win, I'll do something else" or do you force yourself to keep going, knowing in the back of your mind that no matter what you do you are going to hate it tomorrow when you look at it and then beat yourself up for creating something horrible? We all have those days, even the most amazing artists do, at least I hope they do. We all have days where we aren't feeling it, but we push through and then the next day we say "not bad, if I change this it will be great." I'm talking about those days where you just are totally off.

I had one of those yesterday. I looked through all my normal things that usually inspire me, I went through some of my new supplies hoping something would scream "USE ME!", I looked at some new to me blogs hoping for something. NOTHING!! Now in the past I would just force myself to make something and then I would hate it and spend the next several hours beating myself up for having no talent(when I know that's not true) or thinking if I only had such and such stamp, paper, etc I could create something amazing. Or I would say okay I'm not going to create anything and instead I'm going to waste my day playing on the internet and then I'll beat myself up for wasting a day. Yesterday was a "New Day, New Year" for me. I knew I wasn't going to create anything I was happy with. I didn't even really feel like sewing, as sometimes sewing and forcing myself to follow some kind of pattern will help spark my creative mojo again. So instead, knowing how I was feeling I decided to do something else. I sat back for a minute and thought about what I would do in the past and knew I didn't want to do that. I needed something I would be happy with having done and still working towards something. So I spent most of the day working on cleaning up my external hard drive. Nothing earth shattering, but it is on my list of 35 things to do this year. And you know what? In the process I found myself feeling inspired. Looking at old pictures(most of which aren't printed, but I have a million printed to still work with) I started to feel happy. Part of my problem yesterday was I slept horrible the night before and I wasn't feeling good to begin with. Not really sick, but I do have a slight cold or allergies(considering it is in the upper 50's in Missouri allergies don't seem to follow the calender of it's WINTER). It was also the kids first day back at school and so we had to be up early and back in our routine. I had also ran a million errands and took down the remaining Christmas stuff, so by the time I sat down to work, I was just not feeling it.

I'm so proud of myself for recognizing it was going to be one of those off days and even more proud for not doing what I've always done. I feel good about the progress made on my ehd, I'm happy I don't have something I have to throw away because I can't stand it and I'm feeling ready to go today. Moral of this story, like the picture above of Audrey some days you just have to put your hood up and take a nap, because even taking off your coat is going to be more than you can handle.